


Hunger Pangs

by Kendrene



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alpha Sansa Stark, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, I'm basically rewriting the battle of winterfell to suit my needs, Omega Daenerys Targaryen, also fuck the show's canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:28:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22531732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kendrene/pseuds/Kendrene
Summary: "Dragons eat whatever they want.""You ought to remember, wolves do that too."
Relationships: Sansa Stark/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 33
Kudos: 433





	1. Winterfell

**Author's Note:**

> Never written a Sansa/Daenerys fic before, but someone sent a prompt on Tumblr and I couldn't resist. Please be kind.
> 
> \- Dren

> _While the origin of dragons is lost to myth,_
> 
> _much insight has been gained about their diet through observation._
> 
> _They will hunt anything: cows out to pasture, sheep, fish from the sea and_
> 
> _\- in times of scarcity - other predators as well._
> 
> _I watched them once with my own eyes as they devoured a pack of wolves…_
> 
> "The habits and mating rites of dragons" - Everan Maller,
> 
> Maester to House Blackfyre

Watching the Queen’s host approach from the King’s Road, Sansa can’t help but feel they’re being invaded. 

_Again_. 

It feels like they removed the standards with the flayed man - symbol of House Bolton - just so that the direwolf could bow to someone else. The thought does nothing to improve her mood, and she stares ahead tight-lipped, trying to count. 

“How many did you say there are?” she asks, as the snake of steel and creaking leather draws near. 

At her side, Samwell Tarly opens his mouth.

“Too many,” Joslyn Forrester cuts in before the Maester can say anything. Her new equerry frowns down the rampants, his upper lip tugged into a permanent sneer by the scar that runs the length of his cheek. “Too many mouths to feed, and little in the way of grain to feed them. But we need every last one of them and then some, gods help us all.” 

The army is close enough now that she can make out details. The Dothraki she was told about come first, bearing curved swords that can behead a man in one fell swoop. Behind them come orderly ranks of soldiers with armor as grey as the snow-laden sky, the likes of which Sansa has never seen before. 

“Unsullied,” Sam supplies upon seeing her blank look. “I’ve read of them when I was in the Citadel.” 

Finally, after the two foreign armies, come standards and colors she can recognize. Invaders all the same, but familiar ones. There’s the blue and white of House Arryn, sharp against the maudlin sky, and the roses of Highgarden. Bringing up the rear is Dorne, its sun and spear blazing proudly from two dozen banners. As surprised as she is to see some of the rest, Sansa expected them - even after the rebellion Dorne, remained fiercely loyal to the dragon. 

“The ones _she_ brought from across the sea seem to be ill-equipped for this weather.” Some of the Dothraki have entered the keep, and Sansa walks the battlements, following their progress. “Can we provide them warmer clothes?” Without waiting for the rest, the first group of Dothraki warriors has crossed the courtyard in a hurry, and is huddling next to the smithy for warmth. As Sansa watches, one of them shivers and hawks yellow phlegm onto the snow. 

“Not in such a great number, and with so little notice. But I will send hunting parties out while there is still time. We need more food anyhow, and-” Joslyn pauses, and shoots her a look. He hasn’t been castellan long, but Sansa has quickly learned he’s always measuring, always observing. Very little escapes the man’s keen gaze - he’s weighing her words now, his dark eyes unreadable. 

“Forgive me, Lady Sansa, but I was under the impression you didn’t care much for the Queen or her army.” She hadn’t, not when Jon had first suggested going to Dragonstone. In fact, she’d argued and fought and screamed at him until her voice was raw. 

“You’d bend the knee to another southron ruler, Jon? After everything we’ve been through?”

He’d looked at her with infinite sadness in his eyes, and when he replied, his voice was barely above a whisper. 

“If we fail up here, the Dead will march on. They _hunger,_ and they will devour all of Westeros, and then it won’t matter who bends the knee to whom. There will be only death.”

He had been right, of course, but Sansa hadn’t been ready to admit it until after he’d left.

She doesn’t like his plan now, with the Targaryen army at their door, afraid of what Jon must have promised in return for the help. But Joslyn is right: they can’t afford to be picky. 

“I care enough to keep them alive.” The wind picks up, and the Targaryen standard they hoisted up in welcome flutters madly, as if about to take flight. “Dead men will only benefit the enemy.”

A great shadow blots out the light at her words, followed closely by two smaller ones.

The entire world seems to hold its breath for a moment, and when time flows again, snow begins to fall. Sansa shivers, but not from the cold. 

*************************

Nothing prepared Daenerys for the cold.

Ser Jorah had tried, but when he spoke of how the sap could freeze inside the trees and burst them from within, she’d scoffed a little and assumed he was exaggerating to underline the dangers of their task. Until Tyrion had taken her aside to tell her of the time he’d visited the Wall, before the war broke out.

“It _is_ cold, up North, Your Grace. Colder than you can possibly imagine. It wasn’t winter when I went, and still, one of the men bound to take the Black lost four of his fingers before we reached Winterfell. The brother who’d taken him from the prisons gave him rags to wrap around his hands during the march, but the man wouldn’t listen. There was the sun up in the sky, he said, so how was it possible to freeze?” Tyrion had paused then, and had taken a sip from his cup, his mismatched eyes never leaving hers. “But freeze he did, from the inside out. By the time we noticed, his fingers were dark with gangrene, and Yoren had to cut them off.”

Dany had an easier time believing a story about a man losing parts of his body to the cold, than she could the one about exploding trees, so she’d ordered her advisors to gather as many furs and blankets as they could to outfit her armies.

The Westerosi who had renewed their allegiance to her banners had come mostly prepared, even the Dornish. But those who’d followed her from across the sea fared worse, and although the army took what equipment could be spared along the long road to the North, it was not possible to provide for such large numbers. She could only hope that the Northerners could help with the rest. They owed her that much, for bringing her swords to Winterfell at all.

Her fierce bloodriders were the slowest to adapt, the hardest to convince they had to – refusing to don the furs and woolens the money of Highgarden had procured even as the snow began to fall. They’d changed their tune when a few had fallen sick, and after Daenerys threatened to leave behind the ones who wouldn’t listen. Still, without enough warm clothes to go around, sickness had been inevitable.

Daenerys is so preoccupied with thoughts of food and cloaks, she realizes Drogon had climbed further than intended only when a violent gust of wind threatens to rip her from her perch astride his back. 

A wall of roiling grey surrounds her on all sides, and the ground she’s flying over is hidden by the clouds as well. A tail – forest green tipped in bronze – surfaces from the boiling mass for a fleeting moment, but it’s enough for her to regain her bearings.

Daenerys nudges gently with her knees, and Drogon folds his wings, dropping through the clouds like a stone. He bursts through them with a roar, so close to the tops of the trees the army is marching through that the entire forest seems to waken from its seasonal slumber.

Below her, the men of Dorne cheer and lift their spears as one in welcome. Each weapon is tipped by a foot of gleaming steel, and ribbons have been tied where wood and metal meet – of a red so vivid that, from her point of view, it looks like the forest has caught fire. 

Drogon tries to climb again, but she scratches at his neck with gloved fingers and leans forward to whisper soothing nothings in his ear. She doesn’t know if the dragon hears her – the wind howls, relentless like a pack of wolves – but he seems to settle for flying right over the column.

Daenerys is grateful. Despite the thick gloves and the hood of her cloak pulled over her head, she cannot feel her body anymore. 

It shouldn’t be surprising, really. Before coming to Westeros, Daenerys has known only warmth.

Pentos had been a city caught on the edge of perennial summer. It was always warm there, the sea breezes sharp with brine, yet sweetened by the fragrance of the lemon tree that cast its shadow across her bedroom window. Even at the heart of Pentos’s summer, when the maids Magister Illyrio had assigned her would sweat buckets, Dany would bathe in water so hot its surface almost bubbled. That had the servants gossip in hushed tones of her Valyrian blood, but Dany paid them no heed. She would stay in the water until the skin of her fingers wrinkled, enthralled by the curls of steam lifting from the bath.

In those moments, she could almost believe Viserys’s stories about the dragons her ancestors had ridden into battle, and see herself atop one. But then, the true heat of her brother’s anger would flare up, and the reality of their predicament struck her from her daydreams – as bitter as the winter she’s led her armies into.

At Drogo’s side, Dany had discovered a different kind of warmth. Where Viserys had burned with no regard for those his fires may hurt, the Khal’s flames were kept tightly in hand. He’d burned, too, but quietly and self-assured. Banked coals blazed deep within the darkness of his eyes, and when he allowed his inner fires to spread, the whole world wailed in terror. Viserys certainly had screamed, his blood too weak to bear the brazen heat of the molten crown her alpha husband smelted for him

Dany had been scared of the heat trapped beneath Drogo’s ribcage, until she’d learned to burn with him and match him in ambition. After, under the starry, endless-looking skies of the Dothraki Sea, they’d blazed a trail of fire together.

But he’d burned out too soon, consumed by the fever and the fires of his pyre had been like ice on Dany’s skin. Nothing, she had thought then, would ever burn as hot or bright as the love she’d felt for him.

Later, having emerged from the cleansing flames a mother, she had reconsidered.

The heat of the Red Waste had been different still. So dry it wicked the moisture out of every living thing and lined the throat with dust. Dany and her people had endured that, too, and found rest in the shadow of the Harpy.

Later, with her ancestral home of Dragonstone secured, Dany had confessed she’d rather have returned to the deadly sands at the edge of the world than set foot among the pyramids again.

After Astapor and Yunkai acclaimed her as their savior, Dany had anticipated the Meereenese would do the same. 

She had been wrong, and what she witnessed in Meereen will haunt her for as long as she draws breath. 

Mereen had been a mistake, its gilded pyramids a fiction of grandeur. Made pretty on the outside to entice the unwary, but akin to tombs within. The heat there had been stifling. Humid. Reeking of sickness and filth.

It had been there, alone and surrounded by treachery, that Daenerys had felt a chill for the first time. The shiver said to traverse those who stepped on unmarked burial grounds. She’d tried to chain her fears away, the way she was forced to chain her dragons, but corruption followed in her footsteps. In her dreams, too. Hounding her until she could only sleep in fitful bursts, and find no comforting warmth in Daario’s arms.

The foul odor of decay had lingered in her nose long after she’d set sail for home, the unease lifting only as she walked the halls of Dragonstone for the first time, and sat on its stone throne.

Dragonstone _is_ colder than she’s used to, and Dany takes some time adjusting, swapping silk and linen for wool and an oiled cloak that keeps her dry when ocean spray reaches the battlements, or fog sets in. But the bone-deep chill, the winds slashing through the war room, are nothing compared to the constant _noise_ of the ocean.

Waves crash against the rocky shores, lap at the keep’s walls. The sea around the island is always dark and choppy - topped with foam - and Daenerys can’t escape the sound of rushing water, nor its incessant dripping.

For a time, her own fires burn low and miserly and _damp_ , and breath hisses from her chest like the smoke drifting up from the water-clogged wood her warriors burn in every courtyard to keep warm. Then, Jon Snow comes, leading her deep into the bedrock of the island to show her lustrous caves of dragonglass. Liquid fire used to flow through the tunnels, he explains, and when Daenerys puts her hands against the smooth stones he wants her leave to mine, she feels it – a memory of heat trapped in the shimmery material.

Jon Snow is a soft-spoken alpha with sad eyes and a solemn face. A good man, Dany believes, if a bit misguided for claiming to be King. A man who – despite the many titles on his shoulders – _asks_ where others would _demand_. In the end, a man of reason, when he kneels and pledges the North to her in exchange for help against a foe that sounds even more extravagant than Jorah’s tales about the northern winters.

There are times, during their journey along the King’s Road, when it looks as if Jon Snow would like to kiss her. She sees it in the way he never meets her eyes for long, in how he makes sure to never be alone with her again as they had been beneath the island.

She toys with the idea of letting him, but the thought doesn’t spark new fires within her chest, and her body doesn’t quicken.

The first snowfall, however, has her heart alighting with curiosity and wonder. She welcomes the quiet, and laughs when Rakharo sticks his tongue out to catch the swirling flakes. Her delight dies as they make camp a week’s ride from Winterfell, the evening air filled with the screams of those under the surgeon’s scalpel. Some lose fingers, others a foot, and as the healers burn the parts they have cut away, she throws up her meal of mutton stew.

The journey has been hard and rife with death, but they’re almost at the end of it. Daenerys can’t decide whether that is good or bad.

Drogon’s wings beat faster, sensing her mood, and he swiftly takes her to the head of the trail in time to see scouts in the Arryn colors returning. One of them raises his eyes to her and points a finger north. His face is obscured by a hood, but Dany can read tiredness in the way his shoulders sag.

Yet, a ripple of excitement is spreading through the men, and they pick up the pace – exhausted as they are by the long march. 

Looking to where the scout has pointed, Dany can see why.

The forest is thinning out and, mere miles from where they are, it gives way to rolling hills and snow-blanketed fields. Gripped by winter, the land appears empty and desolate, but in the summer, it must be a sea of bronze-gold wheat, rivaling with the Dothraki Sea in beauty.

And above it all, looms Winterfell.

The castle is vast; far bigger than she had imagined. Her interest piqued, Daenerys urges Drogon forward, and he leaps ahead so fast that stinging tears well in her eyes from the rushing winds. Rhaegal and Viserion follow their brother, streaks of color against the white glare of the snow, and as they approach at speed, the castle rapidly grows in scale – from big to enormous. A granite giant breaking the horizon.

Atop each of its mighty watchtowers flies the banner of the Starks – snarling direwolves in a field of white, that seemingly spring out of the fabric to attack her sons when they fly closer.

Among them – and above, she is pleased to note – a swarm of cloth-spun dragons spread their wings to meet her. Targaryen banners in black and fulgid red grace the top of every wall, declaring the castle’s allegiance.

It brings a smile to Dany’s lips; perhaps she will find welcome here, and warmth.

A sizeable town huddles against the keep, but its roads, as her vanguard makes its way through them and to the open gates, remain empty.

Tyrion told her about the Boltons in broad terms, but when she’d asked Jon to elaborate, a pained expression had touched upon his face and he’d said little else. Winterfell was sacked and most of the garrison put to the sword. As for the people who had lived in the castle’s shadow… Dany only has to close her eyes to see the dead children the Great Masters had crucified as warning, and left for her to find.

The fate of the townsfolk must have been similar – worse if the rumors about the Bastard of Bolton are to be believed.

Too impatient to wait for all of her men to reach the keep, Daenerys circles the caste a few times, searching for a place where she can safely land.

Rhaegal and Viserion, fearsome dragons in their own right, but smaller than Drogon, have an easy time of it. There’s a tower behind the castle’s inner wall that has caved inward, the debris glassy-looking as though the stone had been exposed to a great heat. Drogon’s smaller brothers settle there, displacing a great cloud of ravens in the process.

Eventually, feeling her own mount grow frustrated with the search, Dany commands the black dragon to hover above the ramparts that run atop the main gate and hops down his back, much to the consternation of the Stark guards gathered there.

They bow to her as one, but their eyes remain fixed on the black dragon at her back, varying degrees of terror written on their faces. A few of them make to grab their swords, but the one woman among them shakes her head, and immediately, they pull their hands away.

Daenerys scarcely notices, nor does she watch Drogon leave. The dragon huffs once in her direction, mildly annoyed, then wheels away back toward the forest. Doubtlessly on the hunt for food.

Daenerys sees none of it, her eyes trained on the lone woman among the Starks’ retinue. The only one who didn’t bow.

The woman stares right back, a look of faint displeasure on her face, and if the sight of a dragon up close is bothering her, she doesn’t show it.

Her gaze is stern, as icy cold as the snow still kissing Dany’s cheeks, and her hair is the hue of fire. Like Daenerys, she is dressed from head to toe in wool, but hers looks homespun and thicker than what the southerners are shivering in. A pin in the shape of a running direwolf holds her cloak in place, but strangely enough, she goes bare-handed. Knowing it’s not polite to, Dany tries not to stare, but her eyes are inexorably pulled to the thin scarring on the back of the woman’s hands. Her fingers are scarred, too - a latticework of lines ending at each knuckle. 

Somebody did this to her on purpose, but before she has the time to feel horrified, Daenerys is caught staring. The woman hides her hands behind her back, and a frown edges her eyebrows.

This, Dany extrapolates from the descriptions she’s been given, must be Sansa Stark.

Tyrion had spoken of her at length, as had Jon, yet both had failed to mention she’s an alpha.

Alpha females are as rare as omega queens, perhaps even more so. Among the Dothraki they are taught to fight as soon as they present and are sent to the _Dosh Khaleen_ to serve as their protectors. They are held in high regard, and revered almost as much as the future-scrying crones. The stories say that Rhaenyra Targaryen had been one, too, but the stories also paint her in such a grim light that to draw such a comparison would bring ill luck. 

The only other such she’s met in Westeros is Yara, who even now is sailing back from Pyke to strengthen the host with her own forces, but the two couldn’t be more different. 

Yara is roguish, wild to match the sea she hails from, and with a tongue thrice as sharp as salt. Like her people, she fears nothing and makes no mystery of it. 

Staring at Sansa, Daenerys is sure she, too, fears very little, yet she lacks the cockiness that is Yara’s brand. The northern alpha reminds Dany of Drogo in a way. She is one matured into the power she so clearly wields, one who has fought and bled for what she has. Her chin is tilted in what some would name as arrogance, but if that’s the case, Daenerys suspects she’s earned the right to it. The fire in her eyes burns cold, like the blue-green light at the heart of a glacier. Dangerous. Unpredictable and to be revered. 

It causes Daenerys to re-evaluate: she’ll find no welcome here, and definitely not warmth.

Unbeknownst to her, and yet unfelt, embers of desire stowed deep inside her gather. They are ready to re-ignite, primed to start a fire where none have burned for a long time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Daenerys discovers something about Sansa's past, the Lady of Winterfell discusses with her advisors how best to accomodate the dragons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Hope you enjoy! 
> 
> \- Dren

In the end, it takes the better part of the day for the entirety of the column to reach Winterfell. The air is filled with the sound of marching men: sergeants and bannermen yell orders, horses whicker and harnesses creak. There is no way for the castle to house them all - not with the refugees they’ve already taken inside the walls in preparation of the coming battle - but efforts are made. 

Those who don’t make it into the keep make use of the abandoned village outside the walls. Even that doesn’t suffice, however, and once the winter town is full and the chimneys of the Smoking Log are puffing soot into the sky, rows and rows of tents sprout up on the fields beyond.

Teams of sappers swarm to the edges of the camp, and before the last tent has gone up, a sturdy palisade is erected, along with latrines and a moat. 

Wooden stakes, their tips hardened in the fire, won’t be enough to stop the undead, but they may slow them down.

Within Winterfell, barracks that haven’t seen use in decades are reopened and made livable again. The keep’s second smithy roars back into life, and fletchers from the Queen’s army set up shop nearby, their apprentices filling barrel after barrel with fresh arrows. Everywhere Sansa looks there’s people - soldiers mostly, but also the ragtag bands of followers an army on the move inevitably collects. Smiths and carpenters, cooks and stable hands. Women to warm the soldiers’ beds. A looming battle fills people with the desire to leave something of themselves behind - be they commoners or nobles - and many children will be sired in the coming days. Some will grow up orphaned, but Sansa will do what she can to ensure that number is as low as possible. 

Daenerys watches in silence at her side, her expression blank. Sansa wonders what manner of thoughts hide behind her purple eyes, and if she, too, shares her worry for what is to come. 

She’s not at all what Sansa had expected. 

For starters, she’s awfully  _ young  _ \- maybe her age, maybe a year or two her junior - and not as imposing as the stories that traveled ahead of her arrival would have one believe. But, undoubtedly, fires roar inside her blood, as no one meek would have succeeded in securing so many strong allies in such a short time. 

Some of her men have reached the ramparts shortly after she had landed there - three Dothraki who look at Sansa with coal inside their eyes, and a smattering of lords. Sansa’s own men are a solid wall of chainmail and leather at her back, and as the abandoned town outside the walls turns into a haven of feverish activity, the two factions stare in sullen silence at one another. 

Dressed in sky blue wool and cloaked in ermine, Daenerys fairly glows among the simpler clothing and dark, listless banners of the Northmen. The Dothraki look to her as though she is a goddess, and the noblemen of Dorne, Arryn, and Highgarden are only slightly better. Sansa had expected they would follow out of fear, but they seem loyal - and strangely unwavering. 

Nonetheless, Daenerys is an omega, and Sansa has plenty of reasons to be wary of omega Queens. Cersei commanded respect, too - on the surface - but one only had to scratch a little to find the fear beneath. Besides, with three dragons at her beck and call, it must have been easy for Daenerys to win these armies over. After all, who would ever dare to tell her no?

Sansa chastises herself for her thoughts immediately after. She’s been judged the same way, too - summarily, from those who never cared to know her. At court, under Cersei’s shadow, she had been a traitor and a whore. Baelish had treated her as a foolish child he could use to seize more power. And Ramsay… Ramsay had made a whore of her in more than name. 

She will  _ not  _ behave the same. 

“Welcome to Winterfell, Your Grace.” She wishes the words sounded less stilted, but can’t shake off the wariness completely. 

“Thank you, Lady Sansa.” 

Sansa blinks, taken aback. Her distrust had caused her to look for haughtiness in Daenerys’s voice, but rather than dripping with the arrogance of one to whom everything is due, the Queen’s tone is soft. Tired. 

It doesn’t match the way she looks at Sansa. 

Back ramrod straight, the Targaryen Queen doesn’t look any shorter than she is, despite being so by half a head. She studies Sansa with an upraised chin, the cut of her jaw chiseled and severe. In the diminishing light of the late afternoon, her purple eyes take on a colder, harsher light. The cold is biting, and the clothes the Queen is wearing aren’t enough, but if she feels the sting of the wind weaseling under her cloak, she gives no sign. 

Sansa admires her for it, if a bit begrudgingly. 

They remain on the ramparts until it is too dark to see. Torches are lit in the courtyards below, and a brazier pushes back the dark on each watchtower. The same scenes happen everywhere outside the walls, and while it is natural for people to gather round a fire for warmth, there’s more than a little fear in their hearts as they do so. 

Most in the Seven Kingdoms have heard of the White Walkers and their wights, but few outside the North truly believed. A lot of the men that accompanied Daenerys from the South - even discounting those that crossed the sea with her - have only lived in summer. 

Sansa did too, for the most part. The only winters she’d experienced had been fleeting things, where the squalls lasted hours and not days, and the snow carpeting the ground never reached above the knee. 

But now they must believe, and if they don’t, soon they will have proof. 

Some time later, Daenerys takes her leave, her lords falling in step behind her. Sansa makes a point of lingering until the Queen is out of sight. She feels stupid for it, petty even, but can’t help it. 

The way Daenerys looks at her, with a mixture of diffidence and curiosity, is unnerving. Like the Queen could read the secrets of her soul with ease if she had a mind to do it. 

Sansa can’t decide whether she likes that or not.

************************

Inside, Winterfell is nothing like Daenerys imagined. 

The rooms she’s been assigned are bare compared to what she’s gotten used to in King’s Landing. And Lady Sansa’s welcome is frugal. Back in Qarth and Meereen, the powerful people she’d dealt with had tried to smother her in silks and elaborate foodstuffs, hoping that all the gilt would blind her to the corruption and the rot lurking beneath. Here, her dinner is made of a hardy wheat bread and a sharp, blue-veined cheese, and the stew warming her stomach - while delicious - had been simple, too. Dishes one may expect to find on a farmer’s table, not a lord’s.

It is preferable, in a way. Honest. 

Daenerys runs a hand along the smooth stones of the wall, marveling for the uptenth time at the warmth that radiates from within. The portion of floor nearest the bed is heated, too - as she’d been delighted to find out. Water flows under the stone, a servant told her, channeled from the hot springs the castle has been built around. Winter may surround them, but it is kept firmly outside. 

If Westeros feels like a new world altogether, filled with unfamiliar traditions she ought to understand but doesn’t, the North is strangest still. Its people hard and weathered, so blank-faced one must wonder whether ice runs through their veins in lieu of blood. They treat her differently, too, just as Jon Snow and his half-sister do.

Where Eddard Stark’s bastard son seems too reserved to be an alpha, never meeting her eyes unless he has to, Sansa is almost brazen in doing so. She affords Daenerys no obsequiousness, and the measure of respect she’s shown comes nowhere close to that which she should be accorded. Contrary to Jon, Sansa wears her alpha status openly, fiercely so. Daenerys would say she is defensive of it, as though someone has tried to strip her of it in the past. She has a feeling that the Lady of Winterfell’s respect will be hard earned. 

She is no less exasperated for having acknowledged the fact.

“She didn’t curtsy. She didn’t so much as bow!” 

Pouring herself a cup of spiced wine, Daenerys moves to one of the narrow windows and brings it to her lips. The liquid is so hot it stings her tongue, the cloves and cinnamon it’s infused with failing to completely mask its sharpness.

“Does that confuse you? Vex you, perhaps?” 

There’s more than a hint of jest in Tyrion’s tone, and her temper flares. She whirls around to face him, just in time to catch him hide a smirk into his own cup.

“This  _ amuses  _ you.”

“Not at all, Your Grace.” Her frowns deepens in silent accusation, and he gives her a lopsided shrug before admitting, “Maybe a little.” 

“Why?” 

“Because I seldom get to see you so wrong-footed. You are a young Queen, but a capable one, Your Grace. You ride beasts of legend into battle, and it is good to be reminded that you’re human, after all.” 

“Flatterer.” Dany shakes her head, a little mollified. 

“She doesn’t seem afraid of me,” she continues after a while. “Not like the rest of them. I see them look at me like I’m my father whenever I raise my voice.” It had pained her to discover that the stories about Aerys were true. Lies, Viserys had called them, tales born from the envy of those beneath them. 

Aerys’s madness had burned Sansa’s grandfather, and maybe that is why the alpha’s eyes are so full of mistrust. Daenerys is irritated, and at once caught by the desire to prove her wrong. 

“That doesn’t surprise me.” Tyrion’s tone grows serious, his expression weirdly pained. “She’s suffered too much to be easily scared.” His eyes widen, and he stares into his cup, looking for all the world like he’s said too much.

“You seem to know her well.” 

Dany moves back to the table and sits down next to him. They often have dinner together - a chance for her Hand to fill her in on everything he’s heard during the day - and she has come to anticipate their nightly appointments. Tonight had been no different, but now the air between the two of them is tense, heavy with secrets. 

She tries to meet Tyrion’s gaze, but he refuses. He’s grabbed a slice of bread between stocky fingers and is methodically crumbling it into his plate. 

“Lord Tyrion?” 

He sighs, and lets the rest of the bread fall on the table. 

“I  _ do  _ know her. We were married for a time.” 

_ Married? _ Aloud she says, “Don’t you think this was something you should have disclosed?” She’s proud of how calm she sounds. Inside, she’s turmoil. Angry and a little hurt that he kept her in the dark regarding this. 

“I…” His eyes finally meet hers, and the sadness she reads there makes Daenerys ashamed of her own feelings. His look is that of a man facing ghosts which almost broke him. “Our marriage was a sham. A travesty meant to hurt us both. I am sure it’d bring her shame to be reminded of it, so I must beg you not to mention it to her.” He reaches out and covers one of her hands with his. “Please, Your Grace. I’ll answer your questions, if you have any. Just… don’t talk to her about it. Lady Sansa has been through enough.” 

The scars on her hands, her guarded stare. Things begin to make sense. 

“I promise.” He squeezes her hand once, relieved, then pulls away. The sorrow drains from his face, little by little, and a great weight seems to have lifted from his chest.

For her own part, Daenerys has many questions, most of them wholly inappropriate. She reaches for the carafe in the middle of the table, and refills their cups, feeling that they both will need plenty of wine to wet their throats before the night is done.

“Tell me how she is,” she settles for eventually, her eyes never leaving Tyrion’s face. “How would one make her laugh? Have you ever seen her happy?” 

“I managed, once.” Tyrion’s eyes twinkle with the memory, and he tilts his head back before continuing, emptying his cup in one long draught. He motions her closer, and his voice takes on a conspiratorial note. “It happened when…” 

*************************

“What do dragons eat anyway?”

Sansa doesn’t turn as she asks the question. Her gaze is lost beyond the thick glass of her study’s window, even though there isn’t much to see. Fat snowflakes are pushed against the windowpane by glacial winds, so abundant that they all but swallow the light of the bonfires she knows are burning at intervals upon the walls. The storm arrived at the onset of night, chasing everyone who didn’t have duty outside within the castle or inside their tents. Even the Queen’s dragons have sought shelter in the inner courtyards, and finally settled near the hot springs in the Godswood.

_ Smart beasts, _ Sansa thinks with a wry smile. 

There’s some rustling and clearing of throats at her back, but finally, Sam answers.

“Meat. Any kind, really, as long as it’s cooked.”

“Men, too, occasionally. Or so I’ve heard,” Joslyn quips, somewhat drily.

“Very funny, ser.” Sansa takes advantage of the fact they cannot see her face to roll her eyes a little.

Sansa watches his reflection move closer in the glass. His arms are heavy with leather bound books and dusty-looking scrolls, and he strains a bit under the weight, his face red with effort. Still, he doesn’t simply dump them on her desk, but places each of them with care, the way one handles an infant.

He probably feels like he is, too.

“Maester Luwin kept a vast library, my lady. Some tomes are older than anything that is kept within the Citadel’s archives. I found plenty of material on dragons and the lore surrounding them, plus the essays you asked for regarding House Targaryen - their Queens, in particular.”

“Thank you, Sam.” Sansa inclines her head gratefully. 

Samwell Tarly is smart and capable, and she is glad to have appointed him as Maester of Winterfell. He’s kind, too, just as Maester Luwin was, the ample sleeves of his dark grey robes forever hiding pieces of hard candy for the castle’s many children. Little ones trail after him wherever he goes, and he’s taken a few as his helpers to feed the ravens in the rookery. And he has a child of his own coming, Gilly’s belly growing rounder as the days go by. 

Everyone loves Sam and his shy wife, but for Sansa, that love has a deeper meaning. His family is among the many others that have found refuge under the banners of the Starks - one of the many she has sworn to protect. 

One can only hope to be up to the task. 

“My Lady?” 

She tears her gaze from the darkness pushing against the window and turns to find Joslyn staring at her with eyebrows drawn.

He must have been speaking to her, but she’d been so caught up in her thoughts she didn’t hear.

“You were saying?” 

“I was asking why, m’lady. Why read about the past Targaryen Queens on musty books, when you’ve got one here. In the flesh.”

“If I am to deal with Queen Daenerys, then I must understand her.” Sansa reaches for the book atop the pile, and leafs through the yellowed pages. It’s beautifully illuminated, with images of dragons and knights in armor. The manuscript has been perused by so many different hands that the pages fall open of their own accord in certain spots. She stops dead and stares at one such marked place near the middle of the book. The illustration there takes up two pages in their entirety - a woman with violet eyes and white-gold hair sat astride a fire-spitting dragon. 

“Do the beasts need the meat cooked for them, or do they take care of it themselves?” 

Her voice sounds tinny to her ears, curiously strained. She can barely hear herself above the crackling of flames so vivid they seem to leap out of the page. 

“The latter.” This time, Sam is prompt in his reply. “They only need to be fed when they are hatchlings.” 

“More’s the pity,” Joslyn leans forward to peer at the book. “It’d be easier to prevent them going astray that way.” 

Sansa agrees. The dragons - as mighty and terrible as they are - remain a mystery to her. They seem to obey Daenerys, but she wonders why they do it. Is it love for the woman who raised them, or do they know what is at stake? And, if they  _ do  _ know, how much do they care for the affairs of creatures so beneath them?

“Instruct the sheepherders to watch their stock more closely.” At that, Joslyn nods. “And have the rangers identify an empty field where feeding grounds for the Queen’s dragons could be staged. If we leave food for them to find, they might be less inclined to prey on our herds.”

There’s little else to discuss. No messenger has come riding down from the Wall, to report its inevitable fall. The last raven they received from the Night’s Watch had flown in three days prior with reports of nights so cold that a few men had died while on their feet, and of a forest that remained eerily quiet. 

As they talk of what needs doing, Sam takes quick notes on spare pieces of parchment, but after a while, it becomes clear to them that they are circling around the same topics, over and over again. 

“I’ll see you both in the morning,” Sansa eventually dismisses them, her tone gentle. They bow, but if Sam leaves in a hurry, eager to spend some time with his wife, the equerry lingers.

“You haven’t eaten yet,” he says, and it isn’t a question. “I’ll have the servants bring you something. With so many people crammed inside the castle, there’s food being cooked at every hour.” 

There’s no grey in his hair yet, and he’s lithe where Ser Rodrik had been stocky, but in that moment, he reminds her of the old Master-at-Arms, and she smiles fondly. 

“Thank you, ser.” She isn’t hungry, but she’ll be of no use if she can’t stand come morning. 

After, alone in her bedchambers and with her stomach warmed by a small bowl of soup, Sansa readies herself for bed. She is tired, bone-weary, and her chest is slowly being crushed by a duty she feels is too heavy for her shoulders. But there’s no one else to carry it. Bran has returned from beyond the Wall utterly changed.  _ Othered _ \- the sweet boy who would climb anywhere and listen open-mouthed to Old Nan’s horror stories nowhere to be found. And Arya is still too young. 

As for Jon...

She has only seen her half-brother in glimpses since the Queen arrived earlier that day. He’d been among the first to walk into the Keep, leading his horse by the reins, but he had not joined them on the ramparts. Ser Joslyn tells her he’d stayed in his room only long enough for a quick rinse, and that he’d gone back out into the army camps immediately after, to help with building the palisade. 

She wonders whether he’s avoiding her. Or maybe - if the look he spared the Queen is any indication - Daenerys is the one he’s doing his best to keep away from. The thought fills Sansa with prickling warmth.

She’s comfortably snuggled under a pile of furs, still thinking of Jon, when they come for her.

**Author's Note:**

> [follow on TUMBLR for a LOT more gayness](https://kendrene.tumblr.com/)


End file.
